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Yesterday Itoi’s site/company held a small event about IT stuff and broadcasted it online. While waiting for things to get set up, he would write little messages to show the webcam. One of the messages included one of his signature weird-looking Mr. Saturn sketches:

Mr. Saturn is saying “Just a moment please”, written partly in kanji. Mr. Saturns aren’t supposed to know kanji (the MOTHER games are 99.9% kana-only) so Itoi also included the note “This is a fake Mr. Saturn that speaks in kanji”.

Not really noteworthy, but still kind of neat to see him still doing his Mr. Saturn doodles 😛

It’s my impression that using kanji can also help novice noobs like me to separate “real words” from connecting or grammar words when reading. That’s just me.

Leonardo Boiko said on Nov. 24, 2009

LucasTizma: You’re completely right. Kanji might be difficult to learn, but once you do it makes Japanese much easier to read, since it doesn’t use spaces to separate words.

If you write using only kana, itslikewritingeverythingalljumbleduplikethis. Further, kana doesn’t even differentiates the tones that help in separating homophones in spoken language, so it can be really hard to tell what’s happening.

Mother 2 and 3 are kana-only by design. When reading a large kana text, the temptation is great to start speaking it aloud. Dragon Quest was kana-only because of technical limitations. Itoi, sick in his bed, trying to make sense of the kana jumble, would narrate the game to himself: «Hero defeats the Slime! Hero gains 3 EXP!» That experience was important to him, and he wanted to recreate it for Mother fans, so Mother avoids kanji. That’s why the manual is so keen in having you sing along the game —it’s the proper way to experience it =) And that’s why he has to note that this is not a real Mr. Saturn. The real Mother 2 world is kana.